We decided to feed our Queen, “Maman,” and her brood. Having had Monster neutered (a requirement when we adopted him from our local shelter years earlier) we were aware of the importance of spaying and neutering. But as time went by we were shocked to see the painful results caused by widespread neglect and ignorance of this very simple procedure. I hopped on the internet and did a lot of research, which I found educational but not very heartening. We realized that feeding was not enough, and on its own would possibly be detrimental to our cats. So we decided to take a leap and try TNR.
Without any training or experience, we had a few TNR successes during our first year, including a female cat that wasn’t (female, that is!) and the wildest cat of them all, Maman, not long after she had gotten pregnant again. We also rescued a tiny, dying puppy from the side of a road near our house and after way too many dead ends contacted a local group that ultimately found him to a forever home in Germany.
And we had some heart-breakers: two of “our” cats were killed by hunting dogs, two died from distemper and another two disappeared over last winter when were back inToronto.
Returning home to Crete earlier this spring, we decided to keep our TNR activities going, and Little Kitten became our first “candidate” of the season. We slowly gained her trust and she started to come when called. As the days went by, we got to know some of the workers at the hotel and learned that one of the cleaning ladies tries to keep the cats fed. The hotel’s owner gave us free rein to do whatever we wanted with the cats on the property.
Filed under: Articles, News Tagged: | Cat Cafes, Fostering & Referrals, Individual initiatives, kittens
